


It's a Hundred Miles an Hour on a Dirt Road Running Away

by marauders_groupie



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: (no really - a LOT of angst), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Childhood Friends, F/M, Minor Character Death, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 06:21:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5280062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marauders_groupie/pseuds/marauders_groupie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke Griffin runs away after her father dies and it's her best friend, Bellamy Blake, that goes to find her. </p><p>Bellarke road trip angst. That's really everything there is to know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's a Hundred Miles an Hour on a Dirt Road Running Away

**Author's Note:**

> [tvseriejunkie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tvseriejunkie) sent in a prompt on tumblr: "Could you do "You’re an asshole, there’s no hiding that.” for Bellarke please?" 
> 
> Your wish is my command, I'm sorry if you didn't want it so angsty. I can assure you that I didn't want it either but it still happened because I've got Bleachers on repeat and really love road trip AUs and angst. Sorry?
> 
> The title is from Bleachers - Rollercoaster.
> 
> Enjoy!

“You’re an asshole, there’s no hiding that.”

Clarke Griffin is standing in the middle of a dirt road somewhere in New Mexico, God only knows where, honestly. She’s sweating in the unbearable heat and she is one hundred percent done with Bellamy Blake’s shit.

So she kicks the flat tire because reasons.

It doesn’t help, only makes her bite down a pained yelp and glare at Bellamy harder.

For his part, Bellamy returns the glare. If she were less pissed, Clarke would get him that lukewarm bottle of water she has stashed in her bag but she is pretty damn pissed so she gloats watching his curls getting wetter as he tries to change the tire.

“Remind me how this is my fault,” he groans, pushing a rock under the tire with too much strength and plopping down on his ass in dirt.

“Wait, was it _me_ who swerved off the road because you went all self-righteous on me?”

“You _ran away_ , Clarke!”

 “I didn’t run away!”

Bellamy rolls his eyes, severely unimpressed. “Your mom called me in the middle of the night because your bag and her credit card were gone. You left a letter saying ‘I need a break’.”

She scoffs. “So? I needed a break.”

“So-“he huffs in annoyance and throws his hands up in surrender. “I actually don’t give a shit. Shut up for a minute and let me change the stupid tire.”

“Whatever, _asshole_.”

Clarke isn’t sure what’s worse – heat pooling in her collarbone, relentless sun batting away at her shoulders, her father’s funeral two days from now or the fact that Bellamy didn’t even reply to her jab.

She settles for all of the above, rounding the car to find a patch of dirt in the shade. There she sits down, a pebble digging into her thigh, and plays Candy Crush until her battery drains. She’s got fifty missed calls, twenty unread texts and her phone going empty feels like a relief.

It is around that time that Bellamy announces he’s changed the tire and she helps him lift the old one into the bed of his truck.

“You don’t have to.”

“Yeah, well, I want to,” she shoots back, pushing the tire in because she’s got this. “And since I don’t take orders from you, you can fuck off.”

It feels like she’s shouting into the wind because Bellamy just gets into the car, igniting the engine the moment she closes the door.

The radio is playing some catchy pop tune, _she listens like spring and talks like June_ and it’s so fucking morbid it makes her insides twist.

Bellamy doesn’t speak to her. They just drive in silence, sun setting and night descending onto the nearly empty roads stretching in front of them.

Clarke stares at her reflection in the window; hair frizzier than when he’d found her in a gas station restroom, cutting her locks off like a pop star who’s just had it with being touched and tampered with all the fucking time, and she hates how gentle he was.

How gently he asked her to stop, how gently he took the scissors from her and finished her work when she started crying because she’s losing control and she doesn’t know how to get it back again.

She hates how she cried in front of him, hates how her tank top has a coffee stain on the front and how he handed her his plaid shirt if she wanted to change. She didn’t. He said that it’s alright and that he’s there to get her home.

What an asshole.

He is her best friend but there are miles of unresolved things between them and she can’t handle him wanting to help her.

Clarke can’t really handle anything these days because it was just two weeks ago that she’d come home from the prom where Bellamy had kissed her, and it took all of her strength not to twirl in her dress like she was in a fairytale.

And then she found her mother crying in the middle of their living room, broken sobs and weak limbs. Her dad had a stroke. Clarke remembers what happened later in flashes – Bellamy’s jacket around her shoulders as they wait in the hospital (both of them in prom attire, bitter smiles almost teasing at their lips because it’s so fucking _surreal_ ), the smell of antiseptic, green walls and those brown plastic cups with the world’s worst coffee, her mother’s promise that everything would be alright and then nothing was.

Five hours after being admitted, Jake Griffin was dead and ten days later she’d just had it with well-meaning assholes.

Like the one sneaking glances at her when he thinks she’s not looking.

“I can see you, you know?”

A split of second before he decides that he doesn’t care. “Okay.” And then, “I can see you too.”

Clarke scoffs. “Yeah, you always do.”

The lights of his truck reflect off of the exit sign, a matter of hours before they pull over to get some sleep and Clarke is so tired, just so fucking tired.

“Why couldn’t you just let me run?”

She wanted to run, but she could only get so far in four days. The plan wasn’t to stay gone, just to move, just to feel real for a second. For a second that wouldn’t feel like a macabre dream.

“I would’ve come back.”

“I know.” There is something in his voice that makes her look at him. His curls are falling into his eyes, fingers tightening on the wheel, and Clarke knows he must be tired. He drove twenty-eight hours with only one stop to sleep, only to find her an hour after she was done screaming at the desert about how fucking angry she was.

Still is.

Not at him, though. He’s just in close proximity.

“I’m angry,” she finally offers and feels relieved when he doesn’t make a big deal out of it. “I don’t know why, does that make sense?”

“Yeah. You angry at your dad?”

She thinks it through and finds that she is. Well, she has known it all along. It doesn’t make sense, her mind reasons, and she knows it doesn’t, but – it feels like he _abandoned_ her.

And now she’s run away and Bellamy is driving her home with her pride broken and how did it all go so wrong?

Tears rush to her eyes and before she even knows it that lump of bitterness in the back of her throat makes her choke on a sob as she scrambles to catch a breath.

The tires screech as Bellamy pulls over, metallic clang of his seatbelt buckle ringing in her ears, and Clarke is just so _angry_.

Angry with her dad, with her mom who is a doctor and should’ve stopped it, with herself for being angry with them in the first place.

She’s angry with Bellamy for coming to get her, all careful and tentative as if she were a frightened animal he wants to catch and nurture back to health. Angry with Raven who tracked her phone to find her, Wells who just wanted to help in any way he could, Monty for his texts and Jasper for sending pictures of fucking puppies.

How fucking funny is that? All those people who love her and she still wants to get away from them as far as possible.

“I hate you,” she presses out, turning her head away when Bellamy wraps his arms around her.

“Alright.”

“I can’t deal with all of you. With _you_. So fucking considerate, like I’m going to fall fucking apart.”

“Alright.”

“Stop saying alright!” she slams her hand at the dashboard and revels in Bellamy wincing. This is how she deals with pain – she inflicts it onto other people. “Jesus Christ, Bellamy, nothing is alright! My mom cries every time she sees me and my house is a fucking mausoleum! I don’t want to go home and now you’re forcing me to. But it’s alright, I’m sure you’ve got a noble cause there somewhere for justifying that!”

He opens his mouth to speak, eyes careful and she thinks, _yes, be careful, be careful because I might be crying but I am still angry enough to bring the world down_.

She cuts him off before he can. “And don’t say that you care about me. I know that. But you’re smothering me.”

“Fine,” he nods, turning away from her. “What _do_ you need?”

“I need to you to keep driving and never stop.”

So he does. First he switches into the second gear, the truck rumbling beneath them, then hissing when he’s in the third, squealing in the fourth and finally, the engine shuts up when they’re in the fifth. Clarke misses the noise, this way it’s just her heart beating and loaded silence.

All those words she bit back are now teasing at the tip of her tongue and you can’t stop a flood once the dam breaks.

“I’m angry with my dad, with my mom, with you, with Wells and the list goes on. I’m angry because,” she frowns at her hands, red as they pass a neon sign, trying to come up with words that could explain how she feels. “I’m angry because I don’t miss him yet. It doesn’t feel real. So I can’t really cry and I see it in everyone’s faces – like everyone’s just waiting for me to break down because I’m a ticking time bomb.”

It feels like her chest is being ripped wide open and the honesty hollows her out. This is why she keeps it all bottled inside, because it doesn’t feel easier when you talk to someone – it feels heavier because now you’re not on your own. And somehow, you have a responsibility towards that person who helps you carry the weight.

Her pain is only heavier for being shared.

“Alright, I’ll stop,” he finally says, switching to the right lane. The turn signal flickers on and off. “No more studying you like you’re a bomb about to blow.”

“Thank _you_.”

“But can you please call your mom so she knows you’re fine? Well,” he scrunches up his nose, “as fine as you can be.”

“My phone is dead.”

Bellamy snorts and fishes his own out of his pocket. It’s huge like a brick, one of the older models and Clarke hates that she knows everything there is to know about him.

Her mother cries on the phone, relieved, and Clarke lets her know that they’ll be sleeping somewhere so she’d appreciate it if Abby doesn’t cancel out her card.

“Whatever you need, Clarke. Take your time, I know – I know this has been hard on you. I’m sorry for adding onto everything.”

Clarke ends the call, promising she’ll keep in touch and Bellamy barely manages to turn his head back to the road before he’s obvious.

“My mom said she was sorry about adding onto everything. You wanna tell me what that’s about?”

“I might have shouted at her,” Bellamy admits, sheepish.

“Mm, and what did you say?”

He’s quiet for a strangely long time and she nudges his shoulder to get him to reply. She wasn’t fair to him but she demands answers. It’s not considerate but it is what it is.

“I told her she didn’t exactly help you feel better, with crying and talking about-“he trails off and Clarke doesn’t want to make it a taboo. It happened. It’s real.

“My dad’s death?”

Bellamy nods and Clarke throws her head back, staring at the truck ceiling and wishing she could see the stars. Wishing that Bellamy didn’t know what all of this was about even before she’d told him.

She doesn’t say anything until they’re in a motel room, Bellamy dropping his bag to the floor and offering to take the couch because there’s only one double bed.

“We’ll be fine.”

Clarke takes off her clothes shamelessly because this is Bellamy and this is Clarke at her worst, messily chopped curls and dirty hair and smelling like gasoline. The fact that he’s driving her home has wounded her pride so much already and there really isn’t anything left to keep intact.

The sheets smell of the cheapest laundry detergent but they are clean, only reminding her of not taking a shower in four days and washing up in gas station restrooms. It’s a train wreck, she’s a train wreck and everyone else is just standing on the sidelines waiting for the worst to blow over so they can think about rescuing whatever’s left to rescue.

Bellamy climbs under the covers with her and moves away as far as possible. Always giving her space, that one, except one time when she needs the space to run away. And then he comes after her.

“Why you?” she asks into the dark of the room. There is an ice machine whirring downstairs, someone’s TV is too loud but it still feels silent. “Why did you come after me?”

“I figured it was better than your mom or Kane. We fought about that.”

Kane, her godfather, would have definitely been the first one to offer. And also the last one she would want to talk to.

“You did good.”

Bellamy turns to his side to look at her and while Clarke _is_ naked save for her underwear, this is a different sort of nakedness. He sees her, as clichéd as that sounds, and she wants to be unknowable.

“Look, we can just stay here. I don’t have to drive you home. Hell, if you hate it that much there is no way I’m driving you back.”

“Let’s elope, huh?” she teases, confused that she even has the strength to. Bellamy smiles in response and she’s reminded of why he has been her best friend since they were five, why she fell in love with him in the first place.

“I feel guilty for wanting to kiss you,” she tells him. “What with my dad being dead and everything. I feel like that’s the least of my worries but I really want to kiss you.”

The guilt is eating away at her insides because there should be priorities. If you’re furious and grieving, you shouldn’t want to kiss someone just because their lips look soft and they look wonderful and you need to know if they still taste like 0.25cent mint bubble gums.

“Yeah, okay,” he smiles again, slow, relieved. “I want to kiss you too.”

It’s not – their first kiss was slow and tentative, both unsure of whether the other one wants it, different, innocent, something about it so pure.

This is different. This is desperate clacking of teeth and Clarke biting into his lower lip when he slides his hands across her back and the warmth burns her skin. He’s trying to control it, turn it slower, but she’s still angry and it bubbles up in her until she pulls away to unhook her bra.

His hands stop her, pressing against hers on her back. “No.”

“Why the hell not?”

“We’re not having hate sex just because you’re pissed off at the world.”

“Come on, Bell,” she grinds in his lap, feeling how obviously ready he is. “I’m good to go, and you are too.”

“We have time, Clarke.”

“What if we don’t? What if I don’t want to be in a relationship with you?”

Hurt flashes across his face but disappears in a second. “I’ll still be here, I’ll still be your friend and we’re still not doing this.”

Clarke takes a deep breath, pinching the bridge of her nose because he is being unreasonable in his considerateness and that’s the problem she has with everyone.

Too-fucking- _considerate_.

“This is a fucking train wreck,” she finally declares, moving off of him and flopping onto her back. There is a cockroach on the ceiling, she’s pretty sure. “I’m just doing this shit and I don’t even know why. Running away, cutting my hair, wanting to have hate sex with you which –“she snorts, the absurdity of the situation finally hitting her. “Yeah, I don’t hate you. It doesn’t make sense.”

Bellamy turns to his side again, propping himself on his elbows to see her better.

“Nothing will, for some time. I’m not gonna lie and say that you’ll wake up tomorrow and you won’t be angry or sad or whatever you feel. But it’ll pass. You just have to make it through this. Ideally, without starting to hate me just so we’d have hate sex.”

Clarke chuckles. “I don’t hate you. I hate all of this. It’s absurd.”

“Wanna know a secret?”

“I know all of your secrets, Bell,” she rolls her eyes, fond and annoyed because she does. She knows where his first kiss was (behind the bushes in their street, of all places), knows that he once accidentally injured a cat and has wanted to become a veterinarian ever since, and knows that he was really angry with his mother for making him take care of Octavia while she did God knows what.

“This one isn’t mine. It’s more like a secret of the universe,” he waves his hand noncommittally and laughs when she does.

“Alright, shoot.”

“Life is absurd. You just have to pretend like it makes sense, for you.”

Clarke considers it for a while, except not really. It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t because she doesn’t need sense to know that she feels the need to be there for her mother at her father’s funeral, to say she’s sorry to her friends who called and wanted to help.

She doesn’t need sense to know that Bellamy just wants to help her. They all do and she’s just currently all sharp glass, begging for someone to cut their skin on it.

It will get better. She’ll get softer. Just not tonight.

“Can we postpone everything until morning?”

Bellamy laughs but ultimately nods, spreading his arms wide. Clarke burrows herself into his side, wiggling to get comfortable and laughing with him when she raises an eyebrow and he shoots “Still not having hate sex”.

“Yeah, okay, I get it, you’re not attracted to me.”

Bellamy stirs, sputtering as he protests. “That’s not – you – I am _definitely_ –“

Clarke elbows him in the ribs, chuckling quietly. “I was joking, Bell. Stop making it so easy for me to make fun of you.”

“You’re the worst,” he says but there’s no heat to his words and his arm are still wrapped around her waist, her legs tangled between his.

She falls asleep hoping for clarity when she wakes up.

Not that she gets it. You never do. She’s just dissolving in the feeling of emptiness; that strange sort of calm after a storm of crying and shouting, like nothing is ever going to happen again.

But it happens. They drive back to Ark, pretend like nothing’s happening as they sing along to the music on the radio. Bellamy mentions going to community college so he can stay with Octavia and Clarke isn’t sure she even wants to go to college. They change the subject. They keep doing it for a while.

Abby cries as soon as she spots Bellamy and Clarke pulling up in the driveway and Clarke feels panic rising in her chest as she surveys the crowd gathered there.

Raven is fuming, Monty and Jasper are happy, and Wells just looks sad.

“Damn it,” she murmurs, forcing herself to flash them a weak smile. Bellamy’s hand squeezes hers before they exit the car and despite knowing that he’s right by her side, it doesn’t make it any easier.

“I will literally kill you if you do this again, Griffin!” Raven threatens, punching her in the shoulder – probably just as hard as she meant to. Still, she hugs her right afterwards and it’s not like Clarke doesn’t know that Raven deals with feelings similarly – she turns them all into anger.

That’s one way of going through life.

The funeral is a sad affair, mostly because it _is_ sad. Clarke watches her father’s casket being lowered into ground, all that dirt splashed across it, and people stop her and her mom to express their condolences.

Clarke is rationally aware of all of them being sad in their own ways, but it still doesn’t match her sadness. She tries to cry but finds that she still can’t. Her father’s study is untouched, as if just waiting for his return, and the jacket he hung on the door to the shed hasn’t been moved.

She tries to make it work, really does, for three days straight. She sets the alarm for nine o’clock in the morning, brushes her teeth, showers, eats breakfast with her mom, but the silence between them is deafening in all that small talk.

“How was your day?”

“Good. Yours?”

“Yeah, just fine.”

They watch TV in the evening, two strangers in their respective pain. Clarke feels fury boiling just under her skin but she bites it back; sometimes so hard it sends tears rushing to her eyes. She is going to be sad, she is not going to be angry, she is going to be a normal –

Fuck it.

Raven hugs her when Clarke tells her that she’s leaving again. “Please, stay safe. And thank you for telling me.”

It’s as close as she’s going to get a declaration of love from Raven and she takes it with tears in her eyes. This is what she owes to them.

Her mother nods, says that she understands. Everyone understands, even Wells does – offering to come with her. But this is something she has to do alone.

Monty shoves two sandwiches in her hand, “For the road” and Jasper cries a little. Everything feels like a sad goodbye, as if they won’t see each other ever again.

She intends to run because running is the only way that pushes her thoughts back, soothes her fury. She intends to run because there is no pain in it, just your muscles aching and your back cracking from the uncomfortable bus seats and sleeping in random motels.

There is a bag in her hand, a slightly bigger one than the last time, when Bellamy opens his door. It’s just past midnight, the whole street is asleep except for the four houses in which the people that are being left behind live. Those are the only lights.

Everyone else is ignorant to the heartbreak that is taking place two doors away.

“You’re leaving.” It’s not a question, he knows it. It would break her heart except – she broke it already. Took care of that on her own.

“Yeah. Just wanted to say goodbye.”

“Where are you gonna go, Clarke?”

It sounds like begging, Bellamy with his sleep-mussed curls and threadbare pajama pants. Miles of planes, clusters of freckles, that eyes she’d wanted to look at her just like they’re looking at her now.

“I don’t know,” she confesses, shrugging. “I’ll come back.”

It’s a promise she doesn’t know if she can keep. Train wreck. That’s what everything has been for a long while.

She presses her lips to his cheek, winding her arms around his neck. “Take care of them for me.”

“I’ll have hate sex with you if you really want to, just don’t leave.”

A nervous little laugh bursts from her lips because he’s pleading but she can’t help him there.

“I need to run for a while, Bell.”

No one says anything for a while and then Clarke nods, squaring her shoulders.

“Will you come back?” he asks as she turns around on her heel, half an hour before her bus leaves and she loves Bellamy but she can’t stay.

“Yes.”

Clarke walks away, one foot in front of the other, bag heavy in her hand, and she doesn’t look back to see Bellamy’s heart breaking on his face, doesn’t look back because she knows that she’d just drop the bag and run to him.

She runs until all the images of barely illuminated roads melt into cockroaches in the sinks of motels, people she’s met along the trip melt into gas station attendants – she runs until all the blurry images melt into one, runs until the only clear thing in her mind is the image of her home.

Raven, Wells, Bellamy and she sitting on her bed and playing Monopoly. Her mother humming as she cooks during the one free evening in the week. Her dad’s jokes when they’re fighting, so bad they make her laugh amidst the anger.

Raven sends her photos of Wells frowning, Bellamy laughing as he chases Octavia around their backyard, selfies of all of them with Clarke’s mom – they keep her informed, they look well and finally she feels well too.

She runs until her hair smells of nothing but leaving and then one night, she misses home. It’s the thought of that that makes her laugh out loud because she _misses_ it.

All the ticket stubs in her pockets, all the pebbles buried into the soles of her chucks, all the layers upon layers she’s had to peel off so she could lose herself, find herself. Miles of open roads and speed limits that seem to lead to one place only.

She is a stranger when she appears at the intersection between Main Street and Jaha Street (“Hiya, little mayor,” Bellamy teasing Wells. “Fuck _you_ , Blake.”), the leather of her bag now cracked from being thrown around trunks and buses.

The children are playing in the street during that warm August morning, taking their sweet time before school starts again, and she laughs when she gets sprayed by a loose hose.

Clarke is a stranger when she appears on Bellamy’s doorstep, but there is nothing foreign in the way he pulls her in.

“Welcome home.”

It took miles and miles of open road to give her the strength to come back home, but this is where she belongs. This is where she’s loved.

And when they’re seated around Wells’ pool that afternoon, Bellamy’s head on Clarke’s lap, Raven holding her still so she can work on a braid, Wells joking around, Monty asks her if she’s happy to be home.

The honesty of what follows surprises her, makes her freeze with a beer can just barely touching her lips.

“It’s good to be back.”

And finally, after what seemed like a very long time, it is.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this just happened. I'm sorry for all the angst, I really am, but I hope you liked it nevertheless.
> 
> If you did like it, please remember _the dynamic duo: kudos & comments _ \- I'll forever be grateful to you for dropping even a single line, that's how much it means to me. :))
> 
> Also, this is my 20th work for this fandom and I'm floored by the wonderful response I've been getting for my fics. Thank you all! You're the best and I regret nothing!
> 
>  
> 
> p.s. i'm also on [tumblr](http://marauders-groupie.tumblr.com).


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